Blu-ray discs don’t play natively in Windows 8/10, and as a result you’ll have to install software to play blu-ray discs on Windows 8 if you have a blu-ray drive connected to your Windows 8 system. Below are instructions on how to setup VLC (aka VideoLAN) for free blu-ray disc playback. There are instructions on how to do this scattered across the Internet, but they tend to leave a few things out as well as not clarify what versions you need under certain system configurations.

(Using the 32-bit VLC software to playback blu-ray on the 64-bit OS doesn’t work at the time of this posting).

Hold down the Windows key and press R to open the Run window. In the run window type: %appdata%

In the directory that opens create a new folder titled: aacs

Go to the VLC Blu-Ray website

Download the KEYDB.cfg file and save it in the aacs folder you created earlier

If you are running the 64-bit Windows 8/10 OS then download the 64-bit libaacs.dll file and save it in the in the VLC directory.

(On my system that’s E:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC because I have an ssd and hdd, and I installed the 64-bit VLC to my hard drive which is E:\. For most people it would be C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC)

If you are running the 32-bit Windows 8/10 OS then download the 32-bit libaacs.dll file and save it in the VLC directory.

(For most people this will be C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC).

Now launch VLC, select the Media tab, Open Disc, click the blu-ray button and your blu-ray (assuming you put the disc in your drive) (Leave No Menu checked – currently VLC blu-ray playback doesn’t support menus).

If your video loads up with menu bars at the top or bottom (or it opens two video windows) then right click on the video, select Video , then change Video track from Track 2 to disabled. The video window will close, but the VLC media player window will still be open and displayed. On that window click on the video tab, select Video Track, and then select Track 1. Double-click on the video, and your blu-ray video should be running full screen. (Hopefully VLC will patch the video track bugs).